


An Average Day in Blue Base

by mechanicalUniverses



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blood Gulch, Canon Compliant, Canon life, Canon-typical swearing, Comfort, Gen, Nightmare mention, Slice of Life, blue team family, i'm not really sure where this would sit season wise but whatever, my city now, pre-freelancers, some nsfw talk cause tucker, the canon is in my hands now and i'm playing with it like god plays with clay, we're pretending church didn't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14332005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanicalUniverses/pseuds/mechanicalUniverses
Summary: Church is gone, Tucker is pissed, and Caboose is batshit crazy. What's new?





	An Average Day in Blue Base

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i'm back again with actual blue team content for like, the first time i think. no, really. i don't really know what actually inspired me to do this, but here we are.
> 
> special thanks to Pan for being patient with my dumb ass and my inability to use Google Docs. he was my first ever beta for any of my works and he was great!! thank you again, Pan!
> 
> and with that, i hope you enjoy the read!
> 
> p.s. THANK YOU JOE FOR THIS QUALITY SEASON 16 CONTENT

“Church! We’re almost outta coffee! Order some more from Command!”  
  
No response. No, “Fuck off, do it yourself, you lazy asshole,” or any insults at all, really. Tucker frowns and sets his empty mug down. He craned his head back around the corner as if Church was standing there and waiting to shout, “Surprise!”  
  
“Church?” he tried. “Dude, where’d you go?”  
  
Church wasn’t in his room. He obviously wasn’t in the kitchen. The bathroom wasn’t locked, so he wasn’t in there to hide from Caboose. He wasn’t in the training room, though Tucker isn’t really sure what that fat-ass would be doing down there anyway. Never hurts to check, though. He tries the comms and only gets the faint crackle that meant no one was there. He even goes over to the Reds’ base.  
  
“Hey Reds!” he hollered up at the base. After a few seconds, Grif’s head pops up over the edge.  
  
“Go away!” he shouted down. “I’m napping!”  
  
“Whatever dude. Look, is Church here? I can’t find him anywhere.”  
  
“N—”  
  
“Yes!” interrupted a familiar voice. Sarge’s helmet appeared next to Grif, who sighed loudly in tandem with Tucker. “We, the Red Army, which is obviously far more superior than your meager Blue army, have captured your leader! If you scoundrels want to get him back—”  
  
“Keep him,” Tucker said, and then he walked back to Blue Base with his middle finger up the whole way.  
  
So that was entirely useless.  
  
Tucker groaned and took his helmet off and look at himself in the reflective orange of the visor. He picks something out from his teeth. His eyes drift to the chips in the paint. He studies them momentarily and then decides, fuck it, and goes to his room, changes into his civvies, and goes back to the couch with a small jar of cyan paint touch-up and a paintbrush.  
  
He dips the brush in the jar and carefully dots in a small bit on the underside of the helmet that stuck out over his visor. Seriously, why was Church always conveniently gone whenever Tucker actually needed something? They were almost out of coffee packs, something Church would normally never even dream of happening, and Tucker seriously needed new shit for his spank-bank. He sort of wishes the tracker on Church’s armor still functioned. But he had turned it off after Caboose had figured out how it worked and kept finding him when he was trying to hide from him.  
  
Tucker blows lightly on the wet spot, then rotates the helmet to check the sides and back. He finds a medium sized chunk next to his radio. That was probably from when Church clocked him with the butt of his gun because he wouldn’t stop moaning into the comms.  
  
He supposes could ask Caboose where Church was since the dude could probably hunt him down from halfway across the planet like some really fucked up bloodhound. But since he hated Tucker for no discernible reason, he wouldn’t get any sort of answer that would actually help him. Or get dragged into some stupid conversation about whether or not clouds had feelings. Again.  
  
Manual labor it was.  
  
Tucker sets the jar down on the coffee table, then grunts as he pushes himself up and off the couch. He goes to a shelf that’s filled with nothing but junk and puts his helmet on top of it. Probably not out of harm's way knowing Caboose was somewhere in the base, but he had to try. He adjusts the helmet so its best angle would be caught and then meanders over to a short hallway and looks down it. Empty.  
  
“Church?” he called anyway. He listens hard for a few seconds. It’s so completely and totally silent he swears he can hear the dust moving through the air. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. He stalks down the hall and turns onto the ramp that leads to the top of their base. It also is completely deserted. He doesn’t bother to go up it and instead turns into the hall that contains the supply closet, Caboose’s room, and the bathroom.  
  
“Church!” he shouted as loud as he could as he walked down it. “Church, you fucking asshole, where the hell are y—Mmf!”  
  
As he had been passing Caboose’s room, a large hand had suddenly shot out of a door and clamped itself around his mouth, effectively cutting off both his speech and his breathing. Tucker let's out a muffled yelp and frantically looks toward the doorway. Caboose’s face slowly appears in the open crack. The visible half of his face is shrouded in shadow and his eyes are reflecting some unknown light source, like two flyaway sparks shining in the dark. It’s so reminiscent of a crappy horror-movie Tucker almost has to laugh. Almost. Truthfully, the sight is terrifying, especially since there is still a hand that is fucking suffocating him.  
  
“Church,” whispered Caboose ominously, “is asleep.”  
  
“Mm-mmhhm?” Tucker scowls and spits into Caboose’s hand, then aggressively shoves his arm away. “Jesus fucking Christ on a bike, don’t do that!” he whisper-shouted furiously. “What the hell is wrong with you!”  
  
Caboose doesn’t answer him. Instead, he looks Tucker dead in the eye for a few seconds. Then, without breaking eye contact, he slowly, deliberately reaches out his hand and wipes it all down the front of Tucker’s shirt. Tucker stares down at his shirt. Then he stares at Caboose. Then he sighs so deeply he feels his soul leave his body and descend into hell.  
  
“Dude,” he said.  
  
“Church is sleeping,” Caboose said again like that was supposed to explain anything. “You should go away because you are being very loud and annoying.”  
  
“Wh—”  
  
“He is very tired,” he continued in a quieter, graver tone that makes Tucker’s annoyance fade slightly. “He did not sleep very well last night.”  
  
“Okay, number one, you”—Tucker jabs his finger at him—“aren’t his caretaker or some shit, that’s just fuckin’ creepy and super stalker-y, even by my standards, and number two,” his tone is somewhat softer as he asks, “What’s up with him?”  
  
Caboose looks back into the room with sad eyes. “He had a nightmare,” he answered morosely. “He was making a lot of noises and—and then he yelled something, and it sounded like there was a dog, ‘cause I heard a whiny sound. I—I heard that, and I um, I had to save Church from the dog, because it is dark, and he is alone, and he must be super scared! I was super scared, too,” he added in a stage whisper.  
  
“Right,” said Tucker warily. It seemed to make sense so far. Well, as much sense as any story told by Caboose could make. Which meant something stupid was going to happen soon.  
  
“So I went and I sat next to him so he would not be alone, and there was no dog which was sad, and he woke up and yelled at me, which was sad, but! I knew he wasn’t really mad at me because I’m his best friend. Then he made me go back to my room, and then it was morning, and then I left my room, and then I came back, and then Church was there!”  
  
There it was.  
  
“Bullshit,” said Tucker immediately. He must be too loud because Caboose glares at him as much as Caboose could really ‘glare’. Tucker rolls his eyes but complies and lowers his voice again. “There’s no way in hell he’s desperate enough that he would come into your room just to catch some z’s after one night of no sleep.” Tucker narrows his eyes. “I bet you actually kidnapped him, and this is just your weird cover-up story. That’s not the real Church in there, then! Where the fuck is he!”  
  
Caboose makes an offended noise. “Um! No, Tucker, I did not do that! That is not something his best friend would do!” A horribly smug look forms on his face. “You are just jealous because he went to _my_ room and did not go to _your_ room.”  
  
Somehow, that comment stings more than Tucker expects. He dismisses it with a heavy roll of his eyes. “Uh, no, I’m actually glad he didn’t come into my room because I would have been still asleep and really pissed off if this sleep-deprived zombie fell onto my bed while I was still in it.”  
  
“That just sounds like bad-friend-itis.”  
  
“What the fuck is that even supposed to mean—”  
  
A creaking of the bed frame and a loud snort from within the room interrupts them. There’s some shuffling, a long exhale, and then quiet. Caboose glances over with worry in his eyes. Tucker sighs and bodily shoves his way around Caboose to take a look at the lump on the bed. Church’s staticky black hair and the permanent, pinched expression on his brow is unmistakable. Tucker studies him for a few extra seconds before stepping back out. He reaches out his hand to clasp Caboose’s broad shoulder.  
  
“Look rookie, full offense, but you don’t know jackshit about how this sort of stuff works with him. I’ve lived with this guy for three years. His sleep's been fucked for like, literally as long as we've been here. And honestly, if he’s sleeping for once, great, we don’t have to listen to him and he gets to sleep. It’s a win-win for everyone if we leave him alone.” Caboose squints at him suspiciously.  
  
Irritation flickers through Tucker’s veins. He makes a slight noise of frustration and lowly says, “Just—dammit Caboose, would you just fucking trust me on this one! He’ll wake up, eat up all the attention ’cause he’s a pretentious prick, and he’ll go right back to normal Church. He’ll be _fine_.”  
  
Caboose's eyes sweep him with a look Tucker can’t describe as anything other than _searching_. “Promise?”  
  
Tucker internally releases a huge sigh of relief. “Yeah. Promise.”  
  
Caboose moves out of the door and closes the door noiselessly, albeit painfully slowly. “So if he does not want people,” he said, “what does he want?”  
  
“I’unno,” Tucker shrugged. “Give him a lot of food when he wakes up? And don’t like, bring it up or ask if he wants to talk about his feelings or whatever. He’ll deny it by throwing shit at you and then he’ll make your life a petty, passive-aggressive hell for the day.”  
  
“So you are saying we should let him eat his feelings away?”  
  
That gets a surprised snort of laughter out of Tucker. “Sure. We could do that. C’mon, let’s go see what we have to eat. He’ll probably be up soon.”  
  
Still, Caboose hesitates. Tucker rolls his eyes again. “He’s not gonna die in his sleep. Worst comes to worse, he’s just extra bitchy for a day or two. Or a week. Like I said, he’ll be fine.”  
  
They go to the kitchen. Tucker enters it and begins pulling things from the cupboards at random, muttering all the while. Caboose, who had been barred entrance from the kitchen on his fifth day in Blood Gulch for slaughtering their toaster, wanders over to their three-legged card table and pulls out his crayons and paper from seemingly nowhere.  
  
Tucker opens the cupboards and feels around for the last of the shitty instant-coffee packages. He only finds one, and it's from the dusty corner of emergency coffee he had made for himself. He pulls it out and looks down at it mournfully.  
  
“Goodbye, sweet, sweet motivation,” he said grievously, and he drops the package next to their chipped coffee maker. He wonders if he could blackmail the Reds for some more later. He knows he has some dirt on Simmons that Donut would positively kill to know.  
  
“Hey, Caboose.” Caboose doesn’t give any indication that he’s listening, but Tucker keeps talking anyway. “Do you know what Church’s favorite food is?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Tucker waits for him to continue. He doesn't. “Wanna tell me what it is?”  
  
“What what is?”  
  
“Church's favorite food.”  
  
“Yeah, what about it?”  
  
“For fuck's sake—What is the name of Church's favorite food?”  
  
“Oh, that's easy, it's called, um. It is callllled”—he drags the word out for almost a full thirty seconds before he cuts himself off with, “I forgot.”  
  
“Great,” Tucker sighed. He crosses his arms and mutters mostly to himself, “What’s a food everyone likes? Pizza? Do you think I can order a pizza delivery to here? I’m gonna order a pizza. Do they have kosher pizza, is that—is that a thing? Whatever, let’s find out.”  
  
He goes and gets his helmet and tries doing just that by calling Vic and immediately having him transfer to a random pizza place before he can get dragged into a conversation with him. It goes about as well as he expects.  
  
“No, no, man, you don’t get it, we don’t have an address.”  
  
“You should at least have a name or an assignment for your outpost. What is your outpost number?”  
  
“Ugh. It’s Blood Gulch Outpost: Alpha, or Outpost 1-A: Blood Gulch, I dunno, one of those two.”  
  
There’s a few seconds of typing and a distinct pause of confusion. “Sir, this—this outpost doesn’t appear to even be on Earth? It’s—Sir, it’s in the Soell system, which is ten and a half _light years_ away!”  
  
“And?”  
  
“We can’t—we don’t deliver that far! I’m afraid you would have to at least be on Earth in order for us to deliver.”  
  
“That’s stupid. It wouldn’t take that long, would it? Like, two hours tops? Can’t you use warp drive or something?”  
  
“Sir, it would take over 270,000 years on the fastest ship a _pizza chain_ would have access to. Warp drive is out—way out—of our budget, so I’m afraid to tell you we can't provide intergalactic service to your location.”  
  
“Damn. That means we can get free drinks, right?”  
  
“Goodbye, thank you for calling us, have a nice day.” And the line went dead.  
  
“Asshole,” muttered Tucker. He takes off his helmet and calls over his shoulder, “Pizza was a bust!”  
  
Caboose quietly goes, “Aw.”  
  
“I know man, I know,” said Tucker. “Guess we get MRE’s and protein bars. Again.”  
  
Caboose sticks out his tongue. “Those taste gross,” he complained.  
  
“Better than Church’s cooking. ‘Sides, they’re only really nasty if you fuck up the water ratio, ‘cause they get all pasty and shit. But otherwise, they’re tolerably-nasty.”  
  
“Water is boring! I have been using the lemonade from the Warthog! Lemonade always makes things better!”  
  
Tucker’s brow spasms in confusion. “We have lemonade?”  
  
Before Caboose can answer, a door slams shut from somewhere in the depths of the base. They both look up at the doorway expectantly. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Church comes shuffling in with closed eyes and Caboose’s blanket wrapped around his skinny shoulders. Tucker snorts at the way his hair sticks up in every direction. It looks like someone had taken a balloon and rubbed it all over his head.  
  
“What are you assholes doing?” he grumbled. Caboose gasps with delight and leaps up to his feet. Tucker can see him visibly restraining himself from rushing at Church and probably tackling him in a hug that would result in someone getting a concussion. As in, he can literally see him physically vibrating like some over-excited dog waiting for the “okay!” to snatch up a treat that’s right on its nose.  
  
Tucker snorts and jerks his thumbs at the coffeemaker. “Good morning to you too, fuckwad. Just so you know, if you drink that, you’re calling Command to order more, and then you’re calling me your lord and savior.”  
  
“Ugh.” Church goes over to the coffeemaker and looks distastefully down at the empty pot. “You couldn’t even put water in here?”  
  
“Look, if I made it, and you ended up waking up like an hour from now, you’d just complain about it being cold,” Tucker pointed out. “And you always bitch about how weak I make your coffee no matter what do to it anyway, so. You should actually be thanking me.” Tucker cups a hand to his ear and tilts his head towards Church with a smarmy smirk. “I’m waiting, oh-so-wonderful leader.”  
  
Church shoved him out of the way with his sharp elbows and begins to refill the coffee pot. “Yeah, yeah, fuck you too.”  
  
“Church!” Caboose, unable to hold himself back anymore, leaps up with a piece of paper clenched in his hands. Church automatically stiffens and wheels around with the coffee pot raised above his head like some really fucked up sword. But Caboose manages to stop himself about six-inches away and stands there fidgeting with the paper. “Church, hi, yes, hello, you are awake! I am so happy right now!”  
  
“Hi Caboose,” said Church reluctantly as he slowly lowered the pot.  
  
“Hello!”  
  
“Uh. Hi?”  
  
“I made you a present!” Caboose unceremoniously shoves the paper towards Church’s free hand. Tucker half expects him to take it and make direct eye-contact with Caboose as he tears it in half, and then into quarters, then eighths, and then throw it at his face.  
  
But to his genuine surprise, Church sets down the coffee pot and takes it uncharacteristically gently. He smooths out the creases made from where Caboose’s hand had clenched it.  
  
“It’s us!” Caboose explained excitedly. He points out everything as he continues. “See, that’s you, and that’s me, and that’s Tucker, and that’s Sheila—”  
  
“It’s—great,” said Church. His face has a strange expression on it. His lips are twisted like he’s trying to fight back a smile and his eyebrows aren’t formed into the angry "V" they always make whenever Caboose is around. “Thanks, Caboose.”  
  
Caboose’s face lights up like someone had unveiled the sun from behind a curtain. “Can we put it on the refriger-atorer? It will be like a family photo, except it will be a family drawing!”  
  
Tucker blinks and shares a long look with Church, both of them thinking of the same thing. Caboose, oblivious as always, just keeps grinning hopefully.  
  
Church eventually glances away and looks at a Caboose with something akin to an amusement. “Sure,” he said finally. “We can put it on the fridge. I think we have some tape somewhere around here.”  
  
“Yay!” Caboose promptly runs off. Church and Tucker watch the doorway from which he exits through for a few seconds even after he’s gone.  
  
Family. Of course they were a family. People thrown together into a military program and left in an abandoned base in a woebegone box canyon would always eventually become family. Of course, it wasn’t the perfect family with a big house and two smiling parents and a bunch of grubby-handed, laughing kids. That was far beyond any of their reaches.  
  
They weren’t the sort of family that knew itself so well it could practically predict every thought that passed through each individually head. With the lives they were leading, nobody really wanted that anyway.  
  
Really, they didn’t fall into any categories. They were the people who fell in between the cracks and ended up all together at the bottom. That’s where they fit in; where no one else did. They were their own dysfunctional, screwy, loud, fucked up family, made up of three assholes and a tank.  
  
It’s the best they’ve got.  
  
“What’s with that fa—Oh. Ohh, wait, wait, hold on, is somebody getting _sentimental?_ ” came Church’s sarcastic voice. Tucker swats at him with a scowl.  
  
“Fuck off, dude.”  
  
“No, no, that wasn’t—I just meant I get it.” Church grunts a bit as he hops up onto the counter. He sighs and looks up at the ceiling with pensive green eyes, studying the cracks and water stains like it might hold the answers to everything he was thinking about. “I get it.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
They sit together in silence for a few moments. The coffeemaker rumbles and hums on the counter until the water begins to boil. Tucker studies the way the water bubbles, slowly at first, then more and more until it would be out of control if there wasn’t a lid. There’s a click and the humming stops, and the water settles once again.  
  
Church wordlessly slips off the counter and fills his mug up. He dumps in the coffee packet after a moment of consideration. Just as he’s resettling himself on the counter, Caboose comes tearing back in with a roll of tape—not even unattached from the dispenser— dangling from his hair and yelling, “Not my fault!” and, “That fire just started itself!” and, “I do not even know how it happened, I was not touching it!”  
  
Church takes a slow, steady sip of his coffee. “Guess we should fix that, huh.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Neither one of them makes a move.  
  
“You’re welcome by the way. Dick.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever. Thanks, I guess. Asshole.”

**Author's Note:**

> tucker is the customer all people picking up calls/retail workers absolutely _despise_
> 
> if you wanna come talk to me, i'm always available on [tumblr!](https://scintillating-galaxias.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks for reading!! have a wonderful day!


End file.
